Quantcast
Channel: Subterfuge Magazine » beatrice
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 4

The 99 Percent

0
0

“America has been in the grip of accelerating inequality for decades. Politicians have been supporting policies that benefit the few at the expense of everyone else. No matter what you call it – trickle down economics, free market fundamentalism, crony capitalism – it is all rooted in the idea that if you take care of the people at the very top, everyone benefits. That is a lie and we reject it.”

(wearethe99percent.us)

Everyone knew about Occupy Wall Street when I was in college. I remember whispers behind the backs of teachers or over lunch tables. We even had a campus movement linked to a larger one in our small city. (Not many people came, but the whispers were here to stay.) Facebook updates and status messages kept us informed about the larger New York City protests, where they exploded.

I remember watching feeds streamed live from Zuccotti Park. I saw several ‘protesters’ tell others to turn off their cameras and recording devices. Others punctured the tires of empty police cars swallowed by the protest — even as the cameraman said, “I don’t know what they’re doing, they’re not with us.”

At college,  a few of my classmates supported the cause by covering the quad with chalk drawings and making signs. Some even slept in the quad as well, although that didn’t last long. Someone spray-painted an anti-Occupy slogan on the walls. Did he think this would change minds?

In New York, things are different. The protests have now moved uptown to Union Square. I simply needed to go there to see the remaining seventy-some-odd protesters gathering in the park with sleeping bags, blankets and signs.

Though I thought I might talk to others, I found myself playing the part of an observer, blending rather than interacting. At the Free Books stall, someone pushed a copy of All Quiet on the Western Front into my hands. For a moment I considered sitting down to read; the book was old and well-loved, and someone underlined entire paragraphs. Probably a student.

Meanwhile, in the center of the park,  the crowd circled a group of cardboard signs. A woman stood, ready to give a speech.

“My name is ******,” she said, “and I haven’t been to prison.”

The scene: December, on the streets surrounding Zuccotti Park. The police drove protesters from the area. A group of twenty split away as they pushed through the city. One kid confronted a police officer; chaos ensued. The cops pushed him to the ground and arrested him as everyone tried to flee at once. More police swarmed the area. ***** could not run fast enough. An officer slammed her head against the side of a police truck. As she lay, concussed, a few protesters stayed with her until help came.

***** could not charge the officer who assaulted her. She didn’t know his name or his badge number. She could not hold him accountable.

After the protests she applied to graduate school and was rejected everywhere. During the protests, a socialist newspaper interviewed her. Her name remained searchable online because of the interview the newspaper. Fearful, *****’s mother begged her to request the story be pulled from the website. (Socialists — avowed socialists — apparently don’t get into grad school.)  I guess the story remained online. She never completed her studies.

It was an ugly, painful story. There are many others like it. As two protesters began speaking, a middle-aged man came up to me and asked what it was all about. Why had they moved from Wall Street? As I found myself unable to answer him, asked the two speakers. Why were they here?

“I was down with Occupy Wall Street before it was Occupy Wall Street,” he responded, and launched into a stirring speech, but I hated his angry, confrontational tone. I worked my way around the block. I wanted to know what others thought.

Officers stood on each corner for several blocks, leaning against subway rails as they chatted with passerby, paying scant attention to the protests. I moved on to the farmer’s market, pausing to ask a vendor how business was doing.

He gave me a thumbs-down, the corners of his lips stretching somewhere between a grin and a grimace.

I asked him why.

“The protesters. The news vans and the police cars come to watch. They block off the street so nobody can cross.” People gave the protesters a wide berth, slowing things down. I asked him what he thought of the movement itself.

He laughed.

Everyone seemed to be waiting for something to happen. I had come back from dinner when I heard news of the first arrests. O. showed me the story. “We were just there,” he moaned.

I remember waiting for him on the corner in the park, seated on the concrete wall just beyond the fence. Officers had walked around in riot gear. As night fell, I knew the police were not intending to simply ‘wait and watch’. It could have been us, had we stayed.

A student gave me a surprising answer when I asked her what she thought of the protests.

“You know, there are always ‘Big Events’ going on. But the big things happening in our lives that are more important to us than the protest. A lot of us in the city don’t pay attention. Big things happen all the time, so they don’t really seem like big things anymore.”

When I was a student, the city was a big deal. Occupy Wall Street was a Big Thing. We were riveted; we thought something might happen.

Then the police drove the protesters from Zuccotti Park. The whispers died on our lips. Here in the city, the protest continues at a fraction of its original size. Few pay attention except to avoid the protestors. Some change course to avoid the crowds, others push through them. It feels like nothing’s different, because to most New Yorkers, nothing is.

img credit, user DoctorTongs via Flickr

Originally posted 2012-03-23 21:14:26. Republished by Blog Post Promoter


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 4

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images